


no godtier in the 'verse

by gogollescent



Category: Firefly, Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:27:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for HSO br5, filling the prompt "Rose<3Kanaya; firefly class transport ship, outer space."</p>
            </blockquote>





	no godtier in the 'verse

Their latest client was elegant, Alliancebred, and-- as Dave had pointed out no fewer than five times, twice in the context of space athletics-- glowing.   
  
"She assures me that it's all the rage on Ariel," said Rose, having wearied of comparisons between Kanaya Maryam's complexion and a football diamond when Dave began sculpting his protein chunks into a demonstrative pile. Dinner that night was a small affair; John and Jade had elected to take their meal in their own quarters, presumably to put it through its depravity paces before consuming the quivering remains, and Kanaya never joined them to eat. She claimed to have brought her own rations. Rose, who had personally snooped through case after case full of cosmetics and silk before agreeing to rent the shuttle to her, was fairly sure she hadn't. But it was hard to argue with a person whose thumb-twiddling strobed.  
  
"Which?" said Dave. "The vajazzle or the thirst for human blood?"  
  
"All Alliance members are of necessity bloodsuckers. But we don't know that the carpet matches the luminous window decor," said Rose, in the spirit of gentle reproof. "One should acquire evidence before one generalizes."  
  
Dave looked at her. "You offering?"  
  
Rose, determinedly, dug into her protein.   
  
  
  
"Are you offering?" asked Kanaya.  
  
It was later. Rose had left Dave to polish Tera-- his favorite sword or his subtlest stowaway thusfar, she wasn't sure-- and gone to suggest to their on-board Companion that she might like some companionship herself. She wasn't sure what she'd been thinking; she was, perhaps, a little drunk. Kanaya stood in the doorway with her hair piled dark over the curve of her skull, the white light of her scalp turning her fine roots red.   
  
"Absolutely," said Rose. "We can play Yahtzee."  
  
Kanaya regarded her levelly. "Have you ever thought it strange," she said, "that historical records indicate that none of our standing set of social pastimes have undergone serious change in a thousand years?"  
  
A silence.  
  
"I think we also have Monopoly," said Rose.  
  
Kanaya's eyes were dark. Her eyelids turned the flatter rim of each green iris gold.   
  
"Yes, okay," she said. "Lead the way, captain."   
  
  
  
In the end they played Scrabble.  
  
Kanaya, it turned out, was the sort of person who said her words aloud when she played them. Assuming she was a sort of person at all. Watching her push a single tile to fit the contours of its square, Rose thought,  _she must be. She has to be. No monster could bump the board with their knee so often and then insist on taking a break from play to readjust the placement of the vowels._  
  
She wasn't as good of a player as Rose had thought she would be. She was slow, easily frustrated, inclined to lapse into serious thought and not lapse out again until Rose had begun to contemplate swapping their letters just to see if she would notice. She was clearly more concerned with showing off her vocabulary than scoring highly, which was a sentiment Rose could sympathize with; but the resultant picture of her vocabulary was strange and peppered with archaic portmanteaus, adjectives that had been unfashionable for longer than Scrabble. Words for pain and death and blood and light. Rose wanted to take her hands and hold them closed, empty, until Kanaya said something that made sense. Like, "You lost the war because you were only flesh," and, "How could you win when we were ancient, hungry, an army of suns?"  
  
Not that she was a soldier. A Companion who had no business, who never opened her chests full of gowns. Once she had gone to meet a man she called Karkat, but Rose had no way of knowing whether he was real, or rich, or long dead.   
  
The first thing Kanaya had said to her when she came aboard was, "You're a rebel." When Rose had made no immediate reply, she added, "And a smuggler." Rose had thought she was looking for a free ride, but Kanaya paid her way twice over. Perhaps, instead, it was a matter of free power. The sure knowledge that there was nothing Rose could ever have done.  
  
They didn't finish the game. "I'm tired," said Kanaya, looking perfect and unchanged. She swept the board clean with the hanging sleeve of her cheongsam, and gathered the tiles into the velvet bag.   
  
"Is this one of the skills they teach you at Companion school?" asked Rose. "Chickening out?"  
  
Kanaya looked annoyed. "The only skill they teach at 'Companion School'"-- she did real air quotes, flicking brilliance like water across the metal floor-- "is pity." She got up and walked away. Rose picked up the black bag of letters, weighing it in her hand.   
  
  
  
When she saw Kanaya again it was weeks after, and they were in deep space, carrying casks of bullets in the ship's deep metal bowels. Kanaya stood by a viewport, wearing gold.  
  
"I talked to Jade," she said, without looking at Rose.   
  
Rose waited. When it became clear there would be no details forthcoming without pressure, she said, "About?"  
  
"We are approaching the edge of of the system," she said.  
  
"That's true," said Rose. "Dave plotted a somewhat circuitous route. He's never been a linear thinker, except where knifeplay is concerned."  
  
"He breaks them," said Kanaya.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"I understand," said Kanaya. The shape of her shoulder shone through the weave of her dress. To Rose, she looked monumental, like a lighthouse in the days before ships took to skies.  
  
She tried to imagine what could make someone run after a thousand years. She couldn't think of anything, but then Kanaya turned toward her, and Rose wondered whether the question wasn't what could make someone stay.

  



End file.
